The Internet enables a user of a client computer system to identify and communicate with millions of other computer systems located around the world. A client computer system may identify each of these other computer systems using a unique numeric identifier for that computer called an Internet Protocol (“IP”) address. When a communication is sent from a client computer system to a destination computer system, the client computer system may specify the IP address of the destination computer system in order to facilitate the routing of the communication to the destination computer system. For example, when a request for a website is sent from a browser to a web server over the Internet, the browser may ultimately address the request to the IP address of the server. IP addresses may be a series of numbers separated by periods and may be hard for users to remember.
The Domain Name System (DNS) has been developed to make it easier for users to remember the addresses of computers on the Internet. DNS resolves a unique alphanumeric domain name that is associated with a destination computer into the IP address for that computer. Thus, a user who wants to visit the Verisign website need only remember the domain name “versign.com” rather than having to remember the Verisign web server IP address, such as 65.205.249.60.
A new domain name may be registered by a user through a domain name registrar. The user may submit to the registrar a request that specifies the desired domain name. The registrar may consult a central registry that maintains an authoritative database of registered domain names to determine if a domain name requested by a user is available for registration, or if it has been registered by another. If the domain name has not been registered, the registrar may indicate to the user that the requested domain is available for registration. The user may submit registration information and a registration request to the registrar, which may cause the domain to be registered for the user at the registry. If the domain is already registered, the registrar may inform the user that the domain is not available.
Many domain names have already been registered and are no longer available. Thus, a user may have to think of other domain names that may be suitable for the user's purpose.